An Open Letter to Brett Favre

There's a season for everything, and for the great QB, now's the time to stay retired.

Ted Kluck/ July 14, 2009

An Open Letter to Brett Favre

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An Open Letter to Brett Favre

There's a season for everything, and for the great QB, now's the time to stay retired.

Ted Kluck/ July 14, 2009

Dear Brett Favre,

Please stay retired. I say this, in the interest of full-disclosure, as a Chicago Bears fan and even though, as quarterback of the Packers, you routinely dominated my team for a period of time in the late 1990s through the mid-2000s. Nonetheless, I still respected your well-documented and oft-photographed heart, grit, stubble, rocket-arm, devil-may-care-attitude, et cetera. These are the same qualities that made you a natural fit as a pitchman for the Wrangler jeans company—a role in which you've excelled if the ads with the dog and the pickup truck are to be believed. And some of those qualities—especially the heart and grit—brought out the great competitor in you, which is why you un-retired and played a season with the New York Jets.

But here's the thing: You need to not sign with the Minnesota Vikings for one reason, and that one reason is named Sage Rosenfels. Do you know Rosenfels personally? Probably not. He held a clipboard for a long time with the expansion Houston Texans (who will, for a number of years, at least in my heart, still be referred to as "expansion") before something of a "breakout" campaign last year. (Breakout for Sage Rosenfels, though, not Brett-Favre-breakout.) That campaign landed him a shot at starting with the Minnesota Vikings, who were so desperate last year that they started Gus Frerotte and Tarvaris Jackson at quarterback, with mostly dreadful results.

I happen to know for a fact that signing with the Vikings would really hurt the feelings of one Sage Rosenfels, whose name makes him sound like he should be reviewing art films in The New Yorker instead of throwing the post-corner to Percy Harvin. (Ex: The film was, according to Rosenfels, "an intellectual ...

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From 2005 to 2007, "Play Ball" examined the relationship of sports and faith: sports is important precisely because it is a form of play, that is, a manifestation of the Sabbath. Contributors included Mark Galli, Collin Hansen, Mark Moring, and others.